Awake
by J. APPLEGATE
Summary: The last thing Arenar remembered was meeting a Nord who had his face and name. Compared to that, his current situation was tamer, even if the confusion was still there. (April Fools chapter, 2015)


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is an archive of the April Fools chapter I released on 4/1/2015. It revolves around my fic "The Nerevarine's Return" and will make little to no sense if you haven't read it. This is for people who missed the April Fools chapter or want to reread it. Do not read if you are interested in reading "The Nerevarine's Return" but haven't yet. Major spoilers lie below.**

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The last thing Arenar remembered was meeting a Nord who had his face and name.

Compared to that, his current situation was tamer, even if the confusion was still there.

He was in bed, naked save for the thin blanket that covered him up to his hips. At first, the room he woke up in was unremarkable, relatively no different than any room he'd ever stayed the night in. It certainly wasn't the one he, Katjaa, and Saria had shared in the Blue Palace, but that mattered little. As he sat up and yawned, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes, he realized there was something strangely familiar about the room.

It was the same as, or awfully damn close to the room he'd rented at _The Three Sisters' Inn. _The room he stayed in the night before the Thalmor invaded Leyawiin and started the Great War.

Arenar knew it was impossible, not only because the room had gone up in flames with the rest of the inn thirty years earlier. But the pristine wooden floors and walls weren't like the rough and shabby ones he'd seen in the rest of Skyrim. And the typically cold shill in the air wasn't there, very uncommon in the frozen land of the Nords.

_I must've drunk too much last night. _It'd explain why he couldn't remember coming home to this room, and how Thaddeus had looked so much like Arenar. As for the decent temperature in the room... well, it could just be a particularly warm morning in Solitude. _Also explains why the architecture is so distinctly Imperial. _

Glancing down, he saw the person sharing his bed. It was Katjaa, sleeping with her naked backside pressed up against him. Her snoring—something she protested she never did—comforted the strange sense of familiarity he'd felt.

He leaned down and lightly pecked her cheek. "Good morning, love."

She started to stir, and as she did so, his eyes moved to a chair on her side of the bedroom. Sat in it was a cloth bag, a satchel that was new to Arenar only for the first few seconds he examined it. Nothing about it stood out, until he caught the initials stitched into the flap. _LC. _

"Love?" Katjaa asked. His attention still on the now familiar bag, she quickly and nervously continued. "I mean... I can't believe you feel the same. We've known each other for so short a time I thought myself mad for considering it. But after last night... I love you too."

Slowly, Arenar looked down at the smiling Breton he was bending over. She had Katjaa's emerald eyes. She had Katjaa's raven-black hair and her tan complexion. The barest trace of dimples. The slight pointedness of her ears. Everything about this woman screamed Katjaa, except for the one thing that was missing.

The scar across her throat. The single physical distinguishing mark between Katjaa and Lielle.

An undignified shriek escaped Arenar's lips. He scooted backwards, going past the edge and falling hard to the floor.

Curling the blanket around her form as she rose, Lielle asked him, "What's wrong?"

Arenar slapped himself. Nothing. He did it again, harder, but he was left with just a sharp stinging in his cheek.

"I'm dreaming," he told himself aloud. He had to be. "I'm going to wake up soon. I _have _to wake up soon."

He went to slap himself again, to shock his way out of the bizarre dream he was stuck in. But Lielle was quick to react and caught his wrist before the slap could connect. "Quit doing that! What's wrong with you?"

"I-I... I don't know," he whispered, staring at the woman he'd loved and lost thirty years ago. Before Azura brought her back to Tamriel with memories stolen from the real Katjaa Valentine.

Concern was spread across Lielle's face, directed at Arenar. If anything else was amiss, such as the fact that she should be dead or in Azura's possession, she wasn't showing it. Arenar had bared witness to many impossible things; his immortality was a fine example. But if he wasn't dreaming, then he had woken up on the thirtieth of Frostfall, in the year one seventy-one of the Fourth Era.

"Do you need something to drink?" Lielle asked. "Or maybe you should lie back down."

"Lielle?" Arenar began. "Do... do you know who I am?"

If she knew he was the Nerevarine, then it was all a dream. Lielle never learned his true identity, because he never had a chance to share it. Or die in front of her and come back to life, as he'd done with Katjaa.

Her lips curled into a wry smile. "I don't make a habit of falling in love with men I don't know, Arenar, or having sex with them either. Except for that one time in Anvil—"

"I mean... do you know_ who_ I am?"

If she had an answer, she didn't get to say it. From outside their room—by the inn's bar, if memory served Arenar correctly—a frightened Imperial's voice cried out, "Thalmor!"

"What was that?" Lielle said, facing their closed door.

"Ondolemar."

Lielle looked at him. "What's an Ondolemar?"

Arenar moved to his feet, grabbing his pants off the floor and sliding them on. He wasn't sure if this was an incredibly realistic dream, or if he really was back in Leyawiin at the start of the Aldmeri Dominion's attack on the Empire. All he was sure of was that Lielle was a Septim, indirectly sent by the Divines in hope of preventing the completion of an ancient prophecy—to prevent the return of Alduin. They were too late to warn the Count of the Thalmor invasion, which was his fault. But if Lielle survived this battle, then there would be hope for the Divines' plan to work.

He ruined the plan last time. He knew better now, and he wouldn't let her die again.

"We have to get out of the city," he said as she worked to get dressed. "The Thalmor have already won this battle. Leyawiiin is lost."

"I should have delivered the letter to the Count last night," Lielle said, racing to tie the knot on her trousers. "I knew what the letter said, but I thought we had more time. I thought—"

"None of this is on you." He double checked that the door was locked. It wouldn't take much force to break, and fire didn't stop for locked doors, but it was better than nothing. The innkeeper was surely dead, judging by the lack of screaming. The Thalmor would be coming soon. Ondolemar would do anything to kill them, just as he had before.

"Of course it is," Lielle said, now just searching for her shirt. "The Emperor entrusted me to do it."

"You would have if I hadn't been there, if I hadn't slowed you down."

She finally found her shirt, somehow underneath the bed, and slid it on. "You don't know that."

"I do," he promised.

Trueflame was in his hand and his elven dagger was on his belt. Lielle had her pair of steel daggers. They didn't have time to put on their armor, which would make getting out of the city even more difficult. Arenar had faith they would get out, for he'd done it before with the refugee family and Rimion—

"Rimion!" Arenar shouted. His Altmeri friend was in the city. He may have already found the injured guard he'd helped before. _I'm not leaving them to the mercy of the Thalmor. _Arenar was bound and determined to get them all out, at the cost of his own life if need be.

"What?" Lielle said, checking her satchel and traveling back for the final time.

"My friend. We have to get to him."

"If he's alive, we will."

Arenar didn't know whether to feel bad or not for his excitement that Lielle was back. If he succeeded in this endeavor, and it wasn't a dream, then he might never meet the Katjaa he'd fallen in love with.

The door handle jiggled, and a voice with a Summerset Isles accent on the other side said, "This one is locked."

Moral dilemmas would have to wait.

"Stay behind me," Arenar told Lielle in a hushed tone. "If I get captured or I fall to their blades or magic, forget about me and run. You're the most important person in the city." _Maybe even all of Tamriel. _

"I'm not going to leave you," she said, showing the stubbornness he'd come to adore and hate all at the same time.

A loud crack returned his attention to the door. The Thalmor were trying to ram down the door, and the splinters in the wood showed that they were almost done.

"Get out of the city. No matter what." Arenar turned away from her and unlocked the door. He exhaled an anxious breath and flung the door open. The Bosmeri Justicar was the battering ram, and he'd been charging when Arenar opened the door. Arenar stepped aside in time to let the Bosmer charge past him, sticking out his leg to trip the elf.

"Surrender now or—"

The Agent leading the party of three fell silent as Arenar slid Trueflame through his unprotected chest.

The Altmeri Justicar standing behind the Agent did nothing to save his superior. Both Arenar and the Justicar watched the Agent drop to the floor and gasp for breath. Arenar was the first to look away, focusing on the second Justicar. A muscular Altmer, born to wear the vicious smile he was smiling now at the sight of a dying comrade.

Ondolemar Volanare.

Arenar roared as he tackled Ondolemar, shoving the bastard elf forward until they reached the banister overlooking the first floor of the inn. It shattered immediately; man and mer flew through the air and crashed onto the floor, broken wood covering them both.

Ondolemar was fast to charge a Destruction spell in his hand, but Arenar was faster, driven by a vengeance thirty years in the making. His fingers found the Altmer's throat and he squeezed tightly. Ondolemar abandoned the spell and tried pulling Arenar off his neck. He couldn't get a proper grip on Arenar, and his struggling began to lessen.

By the time Lielle was down to the first floor, her dagger coated in the Bosmer's blood, Ondolemar was long gone. Arenar had yet to let go, however. She managed to pull him off Ondolemar with some coaxing. If she was disturbed by his brutality, she hid it well. _She doesn't know what I know. _

They made it out into the streets, where the fighting wasn't going well. The city guards had rallied, but there simply weren't enough of them for Leyawiin to have a chance. Too many innocents lay in pools of their blood, and not nearly enough Thalmor.

Sticking to backstreets and alleys, Arenar did his best to recall where he'd encountered Rimion. Between hiding from massive numbers of Thalmor and helping the guards and civilians against smaller forces, he and Lielle were going slow. It was near an hour or so before they stumbled into a street that was somewhat recognizable.

The first house they approached had been abandoned long before the invasion. The next was unlocked and looted, though it was hard to tell who had done the looting. The third house was the winner, having a locked door and sudden silence inside that no wise man would mistake for true silence.

"Rimion Volanare, if you're in there, open the door," Arenar whispered as loud as he dared. Lielle was keeping an eye out, but if they weren't carefully, a group of Justicars and Agents would overwhelm them in an instant. "I swear to Divines and Daedra alike, I am a friend. Please Rimion, open the door."

A beat. It was followed by muffled whispers then shuffled footsteps. An amber eye appeared in the slight opening. The previously locked door opened some more, and Rimion's face was fully revealed. Arenar almost cried, seeing his friend with both his eyes and all his fingers still on his body.

"You swear to Daedra?" Rimion asked. "Gee, that's an assuring way to earn my trust. But you don't have pointy ears, so you're probably all right."

Already this meeting was faring better than how they'd really first met. Arenar, blinded by hate for all things Aldmeri Dominion, had nearly cleaved Rimion in half. "Are you going to let me in?"

"Promise not to kill us?"

"I promise."

"So do I," Lielle said, joining Arenar at his side.

"Then come on in."

Arenar and Lielle entered the Imperials' household. The whole family was there, just as Arenar remembered them. The injured guard Cidius, patriarch of the family. His wife and three children, one of which almost a grown man named Leonde. Arenar had never looked into what happened to them after sneaking all the way up to Cheyhindal by sticking to the Black Marsh border. He wouldn't abandon them to their fates this time around.

They'd already begun packing, and with the help of Arenar and Lielle, they were soon done. Wasting no time, the eight of them fled the city as cautiously as they could. There were some close calls, but before the day was out, they were marching north through the swamps of Black Marsh.

Lielle was beside him the entire time, and Arenar didn't know what to think. He was scared to find himself waking up any moment, learning this second chance at fate was all a dream. He was even more scared that it wasn't a dream.

Whatever the case may be, he was certain he wouldn't waste this opportunity. Not this time.


End file.
